Glad to have learned of Artkal beads on the r/Beadsprites subreddit! Perler is American, Hama is British, and Artkal is Chinese. Artkal provides such a broader palette of color than the other two companies do! Artkal S82 made this project possible. That and Perler Brown are the two main fleshtones for Nadia. Her hair is Perler Midnight and Pastel Blue, while her vest is Perler Cherry and Red.
The pixel artwork was taken from the Fushigi no Umi no Nadia game for the PC Engine CD.
A handy website called WaifuXL uses AI or something to clean up, color-correct, upscale, and enhance anime images. Above left is a very old picture of Madoka from Kimagure Orange Road I’ve had since high school. It’s a very low-resolution picture. To the right is a 4x enhanced version, courtesy of WaifuXL. (I never use the term “waifu” and it’s pretty stupid, but this website is pretty cool.)
Linna from Bubblegum Crisis. Look how blurry and low-res the original is.
Nadia taking a shower. You can see how it clears up the dithering considerably.
Nadia taking a nap. It really sharpened up the picture.
Nadia’s wedding.
Nadia wedding dress.
Komillia from Macross 2036. The original looks blurry in comparison.
Plus it works on non-character images. Look at how it cleaned up this image of a Macross Valkyrie prepping for takeoff:
This is a nice tool. Apparently it does not work on non-anime images well.
I found a sexy Nadia fanart picture to use for my wallpaper that reminds me of warmer weather. Neat. Mayu and I are nearly finished re-watching the series on the bluray I bought with gift card money I received for Christmas. Pretty soon I’ll see the Nautilus rescue the Eiffel Tower from collapsing onto Paris at the end.
I finally bought the collaborative, compilation doujin manga called “We Love Nadia” On Yahoo Auctions Japan. I mentioned about this manga before in another post I made about Jean and Nadia’s wedding. It looks like Sadamoto did the cover art, but inside are illustrations and mini comics of Jean and Nadia, with their life past the events of the TV show. I have said many times that the Nadia movie was a huge disappointment. They separated Jean and Nadia by having Nadia pursue a career in journalism in England and left Jean alone in France, reset Grandis’s character, concocted a dumb plot involving a girl named Fuzzy who needs rescuing, and it was just dumb. The only positive about it was seeing Jean and Nadia a few years older. I was hoping that a followup to the stellar TV show would involve Jean and Nadia either getting married, or post-marriage with children.
Well, this “We Love Nadia” doujinshi does not disappoint! This cute manga is a collection of short stories of Jean and Nadia becoming adults, their wedding, and raising a family. It is a collaborative tribute to Nadia from many various people. Some of the art is crap, some of the stuff is comedic, but most of it is fantastic. A story of their wedding, Nadia thanking her father, Jean and Nadia naming their son (Jean wanted to name him Nemo, but Nadia objected and thus became Junior), Jean and a pregnant Nadia explaining to Junior where babies come from, and Nadia giving birth to their baby daughter Cherry! I want to try to translate this as much as I can because this is very precious. It cost me 5,000 yen, but I think it is worth it! It contains some rather charming stories, and I want to translate some of these to put on my Greg’s Life page like I have with other scanlations I’ve done in the past.
Too many doujinshi based on existing properties are pornographic. When I found this on YAJ, it was described as a doujin about Nadia and Jean’s wedding. Well, is it about their wedding or their wedding night? I asked the seller if it was hentai, and he said no. Even Sadamoto was involved, the seller said. I imagine at least the cover art is by Sadamoto.
This is a thank-you letter to Sadamoto.
“I alone will make Nadia happy,” says Jean.
“I’m so happy.”
I swear, this is what I wanted the movie to entail.
Jean and Nadia’s family, with their son Junior and daughter Cherry. I imagine that must be King’s son next to them? There is a picture of a full-grown King and his own son.
Nadia giving birth to their daughter, Cherry. (Cherie?) This is so cool.
Nadia was such a fantastic anime series, and I think it helped that Miyazaki developed the concept plot for the show. It follows in the same Miyazaki style as Future Boy Conan and Laputa: The Castle in the Sky. Young girl is in trouble and being pursued by those after her, young boy rescues her, they go on an adventure. One might be tempted to think that Nadia is a ripoff especially of Laputa, without knowing that both were developed by the same creator and that Nadia was possibly conceived before Laputa.
But then came Evangelion, which in many ways ruined anime. It introduced the anime trope of a brooding, miserable protagonist full of angst and self-pity, throw in a bunch of characters who hate each other in a lazy attempt to provide tension, and give the plot so many psychotic, gross elements that don’t make sense and fools everyone into thinking that it’s “artistic” or something. Sorry, I would rather see Jean and Nadia kissing on the beach than Shinji jerking off in front of Asuka as she lays unconscious in the hospital. Shinji is a pathetic, miserable turd who never develops as a character. Boys need a protagonist to look up to, not a loathsome weakling who wallows in self-pity to commiserate with.
Many reviews I’ve seen of Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water comment on how the middle of the series containing the episodes of the gang stranded on the island is “boring” and “pointless.” Yes, this stretch of episodes is a bit of a lull in terms of action and the main plot, but I disagree. These episodes contain character development, zany action bordering on Looney Tunes, and of course Jean and Nadia kiss for the first time. Perhaps the most memorable from these episodes is the whole “white island dress” motif for Nadia when she made a makeshift one piece dress to be sexy and use her femininity to appeal to Jean after she realizes how much he cares for her. On the island, she really starts to fall in love with Jean and she flirts with him, and makes an effort to attract him with this dress. But the allure of this white dress seems to be lost somehow to English audiences as it doesn’t seem to be commented on much or have such pictures posted on image boards. Actually, doing a Brave image search for “Nadia anime white island dress” shows most of the relevant hits from my Tumblr page. But doing a similar search in Japanese can produce plenty of results, one of which is this one. I found it at this page: https://danbooru.donmai.us/posts/4019389
Several garage kits have been devoted to Nadia and her white island dress (I happen to own two resin and one sofubi kits of the subject). So if anyone tells you that the middle of the show when they’re on the island is boring, just remind them of Nadia’s skimpy island dress. This image exemplifies why this island dress is so popular in Japan. Here is a translation of the image above.
TOP: なでぃあ島編のカーテンワンピース：ナディアさんはいろいろとヤバイ!! / Nadia’s island white one-piece dress made from a curtain: Nadia-san is wild in many ways!
LEFT: <「言って！似合うて」”Tell me! Do you think this looks good on me?”> <Her compulsion is cute!> <無防備にもほどがあるとこがとてもGood!! /It’s so good she’s uninhibited!> (This is referring to how she is mostly uncovered while wearing this dress.)
RIGHT TOP PIC: <「おねがーい！なんか妙に甘えてくる!! /“I’m especially pampered!”> (That doesn’t really translate well into English, but it must be my lack of Japanese level.) おっぱいぜんぶ見えちゃうよ!?わざとなの!? というトコもGood! / Her entire breasts can be seen? Is this on purpose!? This point is also good!
RIGHT BOTTOM PIC: <パリーン！/ CRASH!> <-ジャンのメガネがゆれる音 / This is the sound of Jean’s eyeglasses popping out! <いきなりのたくし上げ攻撃！/Sudden pull-up attack!> <ヤバイ！/ WHOAH!> <ナディアはいったい何を考えて生きているのでしょうか？/ What is Nadia thinking?> If you recall, this is when Nadia hikes her dress up to show Jean the allergic reaction to something on her legs she’s had on the island.
Furthermore, unlike as depicted in this picture, in the show when she is wearing this white dress, she’s actually going commando (called nopan in Japanese slang —“no panties”) as she made this dress to wear while laundering her regular outfit. This nopan status is conveyed in the two resin garage kits of Nadia in her island dress that I own.
This lamp was over half off on Yahoo Shopping Japan, with free shipping. I couldn’t resist. It arrived last night. It now sits on top of my CD rack, next to my Diamond Select TWOK Enterprise, under my fabulous Nadia poster. This is on my side of the bedroom.
